Over 10,000 fliers grounded by North Korea’s trash balloon blitz

The North’s balloons briefly forced a three-hour halt to flights in and out of South Korea’s Incheon airport on June 26, and the multiple balloon launches over the past month have required other flights to delay take-offs or landings, or even to divert.

Citing new data from the transport ministry, MP Jeong Jun-ho said that 115 commercial jets have been disrupted by the balloon launches – which began in late May – affecting more than 10,000 passengers.

Hundreds of passengers on flights from San Francisco, Vancouver and Los Angeles “were slated to land at Incheon International Airport but ended up at Cheongju Airport without knowing what was happening”, he said.

The disruption is “an embodiment of Korea Risk”, said Jeong, referring to the term used to describe investor hesitancy over military threats from the North.

Jeong urged authorities to do more to prevent activists from sending the balloons into the North.

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North Korea has resorted to sending trash instead of propaganda leaflets as it did during the Cold War because it knows touting its ideology to South Koreans is “laughable”, said the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in a report on Monday.

“However … they should not be taken lightly. The trash-filled balloons and the damage they do is a form of soft terrorism.”